


Relapse Is Considered Part of Recovery

by rileyriley



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Childhood Memories, Dissociation, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Identity Issues, Insomnia, Judaism, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovered Memories, its the jacket you think it is, jewish bucky, language issues due to abuse, violent panic responses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 04:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2255220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rileyriley/pseuds/rileyriley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam spends the entire flight back to Washington telling Steve about the support group at the VA, about how to manage PTSD, depression, anxiety, panic attacks.  How to talk to Bucky when he doesn’t want to talk about his experiences, how to talk to Bucky to figure out what he wants or needs because he might not be able to due to various reasons related to the trauma he was put through, how to move and present yourself to not incite a panic response, how to<em>manage expectations of recovery</em>.  </p>
<p>Three stories of Bucky's recovery not going as smoothly as Steve thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Country Roads

**Author's Note:**

> Reposting three posts from [my tumblr](http://cutefeyrac.tumblr.com) about Bucky's recovery while living with Steve quite soon after the events of TWS. There's no real order to them, but this is the chronological order I think they are in.

In the end, they don’t find Bucky. They don't find a kid from Brooklyn who can't turn down a dance, or a man hardened by war. They find the imprints of a trained spy, and three well-placed diversions.   Steve has never seen more of Europe, and even Sam says this feels more like a vacation than any kind of search mission.  He gives a few interviews here and there, makes sure his presence, his next destination, is well known.  Even if that’s what’s scaring off Bucky, at least Steve knows Bucky will always be able to find  _him_. 

In the end, they don’t find Bucky, or the Winter Soldier. A man lost between the two is taking a shower in their hotel room in Vancouver, and they take him home. 

Sam spends the entire flight back to Washington telling Steve about the support group at the VA, about how to manage PTSD, depression, anxiety, panic attacks.  How to talk to Bucky when he doesn’t want to talk about his experiences, how to talk to Bucky to figure out what he wants or needs because he might not be able to due to various reasons related to the trauma he was put through, how to move and present yourself to a hypervigilant soldier as to not incite a panic response, how to _manage expectations of recovery_.  It’s seven hours of hushed conversation, even though Bucky likely listening to everything anyway as he stares out the window.  Seven hours isn’t enough, and three pages of book titles and websites are added to his list just for Bucky. 

Steve is at least glad medical sciences grew as much as weapons technology did over the past seventy years.  This is all complicated new territory, new concepts, and minimal research.  He does his best for Bucky, always for Bucky.

 

Steve never noticed how loud DC was until now.  Even growing up in Brooklyn, the car passing by at two in the morning seems far too loud for anyone to sleep through.  He thought the sleepless nights while they were searching would be the worst of it, and that as soon as they found Bucky everything would go back to normal. 

Except, everything is reversed or wrong now.  Steve pours himself a glass of water (his second that night, clearly not an excuse to walk by Bucky and see how he’s doing that night) and thinks how much HYDRA stole from Bucky.  How now, Steve is playing as Bucky, but Bucky is so broken he can’t even play at himself.

Sam’s voice echoes in his head,  _not broken_ , he says,  _he’s been through trauma, yes, but never call him broken._

Steve wonders if this is what Bucky felt like back when they were kids and he would get asthma attacks from the cold winter air.  Sometimes, on nights when his chest wasn’t rattling too loudly, he would catch Bucky lingering outside his door, making sure he was still breathing.  Steve would invite him in and sometimes they would talk, but mostly they would just sleep. It was always easier to sleep when Bucky was there keeping him warm.  Bucky never made him think his asthma attacks were a burden.

There were also the nights, though, where neither of them would sleep until dawn.  Nights where he breathed through Bucky because he couldn’t himself, and the only things that existed were Bucky at his back and the cold air clawing into his lungs, so he took one wheezing breath after another and never, ever stopped.  Bucky talked him through it, wiped the strained tears away from his eyes.  He always knew he was never alone, even when the rest of New York wanted to ignore him.

He hears noises from the living room, and Steve thinks he woke up Bucky (again, he doesn’t know how to be quiet enough anymore, it seems, Though sometimes Steve wonders if Bucky sleeps at all).  At the very least he can offer his company and make two thirty-seven am a little bit nicer time to be awake.

Instead he finds Bucky’s metal arm thrashing and pained half-formed words spilling from his mouth, and a car  _screeches_  and Bucky  _bolts_ , and Steve deflects his arm before he sees the flash of the knife.

The plastic cup rolls under the coffee table, forgotten.  Bucky is shaking, his shoulders shuttering with his shallow breaths.  Bucky makes a low, desperate noise in the back of his throat like he’s forgotten language.

_Routine_ , he thinks, in more Sam’s voice than his own.

“Today is May fourth,” he pauses, and takes a deep, obvious breath hoping for Bucky to copy his movements.  He knows he’s enunciating more than normal, like when he was on the bond tour performing in front of an audience.  Making sure that Bucky knows this is English, not German or Russian or whatever else they might have forced in him, to give Bucky his words back.  “It is two-thirty seven in the morning.”  He pauses, makes a show of breathing again, and he sees Bucky mimic the movement in his shoulders.  “My name is Steve Rogers.”  Pause, breathe.  Bucky’s eyes lose some of their wild terror, and Steve loosens his grip on Bucky’s wrists. “I was born July fourth, nineteen-eighteen.”  Bucky is mouthing the words with him now.  

_Routine_ , he thinks, still in Sam’s voice.

“Today is May fourth,” Bucky echoes quietly, “it is oh-two – two thirty seven in the morning.”  His shoulders fall, relaxing, and Steve releases his wrists, but Bucky is still looking beyond Steve.  “My name is James Barnes.  I—“ his eyes suddenly focus on Steve: here and now, not lost in memories.  His voice is confident.  “You always call me Bucky.  Everyone does.  Once for my birthday you gave me a card that said  _redeemable for one full week where I promise to not get in a fight._ ”  A smile tries to cross his lips, but it shines in his eyes.

And – god – even  _he_  had forgotten about that.  Bucky was turning fifteen and Steve didn’t even have money to buy him a candy bar down the street, so he spent all day working on that damn piece of paper to make it look like a real certificate, and Bucky had laughed when he opened it, and never redeemed it.

Steve smiles, “That’s right, I did,” and openly, carefully, reaches for the knife loosely held in Bucky’s metal arm.  Bucky lets him.  “You never redeemed it.”

Bucky is looking past him again, and he slowly sits down on the bed.  He echoes Steve again, saying the words slowly like they are unfamiliar and he’s trying so hard to match an event and words.  But he’s lost again, decades of manipulation washing away any mark he makes in the sand.  Bucky is repeating  _didn’t redeem it, didn’t redeem it_  under his breath like a chant, his hands fisting.  Steve carefully puts a hand on his shoulder, his flesh-and-blood shoulder, to quiet him, and tells him to  _breathe._ Bucky closes his eyes, and does.

Steve puts the knife on the coffee table (away from Bucky, but in view for reassurance) and sits next to him, and puts a loose arm around him, and breathes deeply against Bucky.  Eventually Bucky matches his measured breaths, and he looks away, fists clenching in frustration, but now done consciously at himself.  Steve is happy that Bucky is back in the present, at least, but the nightmares and panic attacks haven’t shown any sign of slowing.  Bucky has so much still to remember that Steve doubts it will be any time soon, so instead he sits and holds Bucky, and breathes in tempo with the night.


	2. Take Me Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Soldier wakes up in an unfamiliar room.

The Soldier jolts awake in an unfamiliar room.  He sits up, wincing at the deafening creaks the bed — the couch? — makes as he moves.  If anyone is here, they must know he is awake now.  The Soldier looks around, eyes adjusting easily to the predawn light, and everything is too  _domestic_ to be a safehouse; HYDRA has not found him yet apparently.  Did he break in to eat, sleep, restock on supplies? He stands up, careful of the couch and does not make a sound, and feels too light with the little clothing he is wearing.  Whoever had him must have drugged him.  Why not restrain him too?

The kitchen is dark, but lived in.  Three American magazines are stacked on the dining table.  A few plates lay in a rack, dry, and the Soldier opens a cabinet six and a half inches (because any wider and it will creak, why does he know this? Has he been here before?) and it’s the correct cabinet.

An alarm, shrill but muffled, blares, and the Soldier’s head whips around as he grabs a knife, unthinkingly.  He silently approaches the door and hears a groan, masculine, and the bed shifting to quiet the alarm.  The footsteps indicate someone heavy, likely tall and muscular; may know what they’re doing in a fight, but he has the advantage of surprise. 

The door opens, and the man is rubbing his eyes as he steps through.  The Soldier hesitates — the man look familiar, somehow — then lunges, pressing the knife to his throat and pinning the man’s arms behind his back.  The man is fast, stronger than he looks, and very much awake now.

The Soldier is thrown against the wall, the man trying to get the knife out of his hand.  He sweeps the man off his feet, but he rolls and jumps up before the Soldier can pin him.  He doesn’t try to attack the Soldier, and only tries to defend himself as the Soldier attacks.  He backs up the man to the wall (the man can move inhumanly fast, how is that possible?) and kicks him in the stomach, giving him the opening to pin the man against the wall and press the knife to his neck, arms restrained with his metal hand.

“Where am I?” The Soldier demands.  The shape of the words feel wrong on his lips.

The man is speaking, but somehow the Soldier doesn’t understand what he’s saying.  The words seem distant and jumbled, yet still familiar.  “Where am I?” The Soldier demands again, louder, and presses the knife harder into the man’s neck. The shape of the words feel different, even though he knows he said the same thing.

The man takes a slow breath and tries to look back at the Soldier.  When he speaks, his American (Brooklyn) accent is thick, and he speaks slowly like he’s trying to remember the words, but _finally_ the Soldier understands him. “Vous êtes à — Washington DC, votre — votre nom est James Barnes, il est — six heures du matin—”

The Soldier shoves the man against the wall.  He feels dizzy, why is he saying these other things?  He feels himself repeating the words, and they don’t feel so strange.  _I was born in nineteen-sixteen.  I grew up in Brooklyn, New York City. My dad died two days before my bar mitzvah.  I had three sisters.  I served in the 107th during World War II.  I was the best fuckin’ sniper the Army ever had._

Bucky’s hands go lax, and Steve turns to face Bucky.  Not for the first time, Bucky is glad that Steve is taller than him now so he can crumple into his chest.  The knife clatters to the floor.  Steve holds him.

He takes a shaky breath and wills tears to not fall from his eyes.  ”I’m sorry,” he chokes out, “oh god, oh god, I’m sorry.”  _God._

Steve rubs soothing circles in his back and Bucky feels detached from himself.  He can’t steady his breath.  Can’t curl up in a ball small enough to ever make this go away, ever make this _stop_.

Finally, Bucky pulls back from Steve’s chest and — shit  _shit — “Shit, Steve, are you bleeding?”_

Steve tries to smile, nose crooked and forehead dripping. “It’s okay, Buck, it’s fine, I’ve been busted up worse.  Remember once when you found me behind a diner —”

“ _Steve,_ " Bucky’s voice cracks and he doesn’t think he can will the tears back any longer, "Steve, I did this, I did this to you.   _I did this._ I—” Steve pulls him into his shoulder and Bucky sobs.  ”I hurt you, Steve, I  _hurt_ you—”

Steve quiets him, but Bucky’s breath still comes in shaky, noisy heaves.  ”It’s okay, it’s all right, it’ll heal.  And remember what Sam said? Sam said this is normal, relapses are normal,” Bucky is pulling at Steve’s shirt because he doesn’t want this to be _normal_  or some kind of  _part of recovery_ bullshit because he’s done with not having full control over himself, but even after he’s escaped HYDRA he still can’t control his life, his mind, his body. He still hates going anywhere he can’t get the building plans to read and memorize.

His body feels fragile, like he’s trying to cross the Grand Canyon on a razor wire in bare feet. Sometimes he thinks he misses the chair, the wipes.  The quiet. The certainty.

Steve asks if he wants to lay down, and Bucky makes a noise that Steve understands as a ‘yes’, and half-carries him to his bed.  Its too-soft and still warm and Bucky pulls the comforter over his head.  Steve is still sitting next to him.  Bucky rolls over and curls around Steve’s body.

"I was going to kill you," Bucky mumbles.

Steve cards a hand through Bucky’s hair. “You tried before, it didn’t work.”  Bucky can’t bring himself to laugh, but he manages a smile.

"You should probably clean yourself up, though," he says, and curls around Steve more.  Just curling around Steve is better than anything HYDRA ever did to him.

"Do you want me to leave?"

Bucky pulls the bedcovers over his head and shakes his head.  ”No.”  

He hears Steve move and grunt, then blow his nose carefully. “There, now I won’t bleed all over you.”

"S’your bed," he says quietly, and Steve lets out a chuckle.

"Go to bed," Steve admonishes.  "I’ll be right here when you wake up."

Bucky’s hands feel more attached to his body now, so he flexes his fingers, touches each arm carefully and solidly.  ”Right here?”

Steve laughs genuinely now, though quiet.  ”Well, maybe in the kitchen eating breakfast.  Or lunch.”

Bucky doesn’t move for a while, thinking of going to sleep at last. Quietly, he asks, “Come back when you’re done eating, okay?”

"Okay," Steve says, "okay."


	3. To The Place I Belong

“Do you want to get dressed?” Steve asks.

Bucky nods noncommittally, because he has learned if he doesn’t, Steve will ask him again, worried, and eventually cancel any plans he had that day.  Steve asks lots of questions.  They mostly are not things he can report on, so he doesn’t answer. 

Steve bought him jeans and plain t-shirts, and lays out the clothes on Bucky’s bed.  He wears them because the clothes are generic, which means he can follow Steve without drawing attention.  He can blend in, not draw attention.  He wears _nondescript_  like armor.

Sometimes the Winter Soldier almost believes this is a mission and is awaiting orders.  HYDRA will contact again when necessary.  For now lay low, wait.  How to be unremarkable is carved into his bones. He doesn’t mind being complacent in the meanwhile.

Steve asks him what he wants to eat often.  He shrugs most of the time; sometimes he says  _anything_ so Steve doesn’t worry.  He eats like he’s still in basic training because food is means to an end, like loading a gun.  He feels Steve watch him, but there has always been someone watching him, recording, taking notes, evaluating.  He is not corrected, so his form must be right.

Once, Steve was at the microwave making his own dinner, but there was already a plate out for Bucky.  He was half done before Steve noticed and told him to stop, he hadn’t warmed it up yet.  He hadn’t noticed.  Steve frowned in a way that meant he would be calling Natasha that night.  It was shorter than their last conversation.

Every few days, Steve asks, “Do you want to shave?”  He hasn’t found a pattern for how often Steve asks this question.

Bucky shrugs, “Okay.”

The first time Steve turns on the electric razor, he panics and the Winter Soldier breaks the mirror fighting Steve.  After he comes back to himself, Bucky spends four hours at the table with a screwdriver deconstructing and reconstructing the razor until the buzzing no longer makes him panic.  It’s three weeks before the buzzing stops putting him on edge. 

Steve makes them dinner again.  Chicken, already made and picked up from a store (he doesn’t like the sound of plastic bags), potatoes, boiled, and seven pieces of steamed broccoli.  Bucky looks at his plate.  It looks like every other meal he’s had. 

“I,” Bucky says and Steve’s head jerks up, “don’t want this.”  The words feel strange on his tongue, like he’s trying to remember French from a ninth grade class.  He’s not sure if they’re right. 

“Alright,” Steve says, and Bucky can hear the caution in his voice and sees it in how Steve leans.  “What do you want?”  There is an odd edge to his voice, like once when Bucky asked if the Stark Expo still happened every year.

Bucky frowns.  He can’t remember what he does want.  He thinks hard, was there one time he saved up for three days to eat one specific thing? “An apple,” he says.

Steve stands to get it, and Bucky is still trying to remember.  There was something with the apple, it wasn’t an apple plain.  “What do you eat with apples?” He asks Steve.

Steve puts their dinner in the fridge for tomorrow, and they watch  _Casablanca_ and eat apples with peanut butter and honey.  Bucky thinks he likes the movie.  He says some of Humphrey Bogart’s lines to himself that night when he’s alone, and the words don’t seem foreign and the accent comes easier than he thought.  At breakfast the next day, he holds his coffee to Steve and says,  _here’s looking at you, kid,_ and Steve smiles and blushes.

He likes Steve’s smile.  He likes it. 

Bucky likes that there are so many museums in Washington.  They are more interesting than reading books or him and Steve bumbling through the Internet to catch up on history, and they’re always quiet.  At first, they only go to art museums.  Bucky follows diligently.  He looks at Steve more than he looks at paintings.  Steve appreciates the brushstrokes and composition in a way Bucky can only find in the movement of bodies fighting. 

Today, Steve asked if he would like to go to the National Gallery.  Bucky says, “Okay.”

Steve has lots of jackets.  They’re slightly too big for him, but Bucky finds them comfortable, comforting.  Usually Steve lets him borrow a sweatshirt or a simple jacket, but when Bucky opens the closet of jackets he stares.  He wants something.  He says so.

“I,” he says, “want a jacket.”  He is still looking in the closet.  Steve is behind him, putting on his shoes.  “I want a blue jacket.  I want my own blue jacket.”  He doesn’t feel guilty saying any of these things.  He feels good.  He turns around.

“Okay,” say Steve.  Steve is smiling again.  “We’ll go shopping.”

Shopping is more exhausting than he thought it would be.  There are lots of people, and lots of options.  He doesn’t like them, and Steve deals with them most of the time.  He thought a jacket would be simple, and he can’t articulate why he doesn’t like them.

“You always had an eye for fashion,” Steve tells him when he asks.   Bucky frowns.  At least it’s other people’s fault.  There are so many stores, and he dislikes how much work this takes.  It’s not like picking a gun for a job, or blending in for an assignment.

The next store Steve takes him to is smaller, and the employees are less demanding.  They still don’t find something he wants, but they stay longer and Bucky looks at other things too.   They leave, but Bucky tells Steve he would like to go back one day.

The sun is turning the city orange when Bucky finds the jacket.  He pulls it off the rack and tells Steve, “I want this one.”

It’s a long and heavy blue pea coat, too thick for the spring air, but he knows it will be warm and reliable.  Steve tells him  _try it on first, Buck_ , but he only puts it on because  _this_  is the jacket he wants.  He wears it on the ride home.

 In September, Steve asks if he wants to go to Rosh Hashanah services.  Bucky frowns, and then nods,  “Okay.”

The synagogue is large and nearly completely filled.  Bucky’s new clothes are formal and uncomfortable.  Steve tries to make himself smaller as they walk to their seats, and Bucky wants to put on a shawl and cover his head like the other men, but Steve doesn’t so he doesn’t either.  They sit in the back, rows around them empty. 

 Bucky follows along in the prayer book, mumbling the words and hunched over.  He’s dizzy. There is an arm around his shoulders.  The rabbi is singing at the bimah and Bucky remembers one cool November day in a too-big talit standing at the head of the congregation and smiling only for Steve, and afterwards Steve told him he had no idea what was going on, _but Buck you sang real good_  and they laugh together and share a glass of wine.  He remembers soft, sweet challah and candles in the window, and making as much noise as he could in synagogue one night a year.

He is dizzy and terrified and his feet are moving.  There is cool water running over his fingers and a hand on his back.  Bucky flinches when he sees his reflection in the bathroom mirror, but Steve is there.  Steve is always there. 

“You always went with me to services,” whispers Bucky into Steve’s shoulder, “when we lived together I told you as much of the seder as I could remember because we didn’t have a book or money to buy anything.”  
  
“You did,” Steve whispers, “and you came with me to church on Easter and Christmas.”  Bucky remembers the uncomfortable-shit pews and beautiful stained glass.  He remembers making fun of Latin together because the Latin teacher at their high school was a strict motherfucker everyone was terrified of and probably met Julius Caesar when he was a kid.

They don’t stay for the rest of the service.  Bucky falls asleep as Steve drives them home, and he sleeps for the rest of the day.  He cuts up an apple and dips it in honey as he and Steve watch I Love Lucy.  Ten days later, Steve doesn’t worry when Bucky refuses his morning coffee.  They don’t go to services, and instead watch Ken Burns documentaries all day.  They eat dinner late, and Steve surprises Bucky with a round challah.  He eats slowly.  He doesn’t remember the words to Kiddush. They fall asleep together watching  _Seinfeld_  and it’s the first night Bucky doesn’t have nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was the piece i was most proud of writing uwu jewish bucky is my life i will fight you on this


End file.
